Police forces from 16 countries, mostly in Latin America, carried out a joint and simultaneous operation Tuesday targeting offences related to child sexual abuse material.
Domestic authorities were part of the coordinated operation, which led to 84 arrests across the country and abroad, authorities said on Tuesday.
The operation, dubbed “International Operation Allies for Children VI”, brought together police forces from 16 countries who carried out 270 raids simultaneously.
Of those, 68 took place in Argentina across the capital and multiple provinces, while others were conducted in Brazil, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Uruguay, Paraguay, Costa Rica, Spain, Peru, Puerto Rico, Honduras and France.
Argentine authorities said 26 of the arrests were made in the country, with the remaining 58 abroad.
Suspects were detained on charges including possession, production and distribution of child sexual abuse material.
The operation was coordinated by the Judicial Investigations Corps (CIJ) of the Buenos Aires City Public Prosecutor’s Office, which identified targets using digital tools designed to detect the distribution of abusive material on peer-to-peer networks, as well as reports from the US-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Investigators identified dozens of addresses across Argentina, including in Buenos Aires City and the provinces of Buenos Aires, Santa Cruz, Córdoba and other regions, which were then referred to local jurisdictions for further investigation and raids.
Across the region, Brazil carried out 159 search and seizure warrants and 16 preventive arrest orders involving more than 700 officers, while in Uruguay five people were arrested and 40 electronic devices seized, according to authorities.
The joint action aims to combat the sexual abuse of minors “especially in the cyber environment,” officials said, highlighting the growing role of digital platforms in such crimes.
“We are very satisfied with the results we obtained, involving several countries coordinated from the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. These types of activities are very important because we act as overall coordinators,” said Martín López Zavaleta, the City’s Attorney General.
“We are dismantling networks that traffic this type of images of sexual abuse of children and adolescents, getting to the root of the problem: seeking them out, arresting them, seizing all the equipment where these images are stored, and also investigating whether, in addition to possessing such material, they are perpetrators of sexual abuse crimes against children and adolescents,” he added.
Specialised prosecutor Daniela Dupuy said the next stage of the investigation would focus on analysing seized digital devices to determine whether cases proceed to trial or are resolved through expedited legal processes.
Authorities emphasised that in cases such as these the international community prefers the terms “sexual abuse” or “sexual violence” against minors rather than “pornography,” as they more accurately reflect the severity of the crimes.
The “Allies for Children” initiative is an international effort coordinated from Argentina and designed to combat the sexual exploitation of minors in digital environments through simultaneous, cross-border operations.
It stems from cooperation between Argentine authorities, the United States Embassy and the US Department of Homeland Security, and makes use of specialised systems to identify users sharing abusive material online.
– TIMES/AFP/NA
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